Mechanical refrigeration units are evacuated and filled with a refrigerant. The efficiency and reliability of this evacuation and charging process usually depends, at least to some degree, upon the skill of a person performing the process. It would be desirable, and it is an object of the invention, to provide methods and apparatus which result in the evacuation and charging of a refrigeration unit with very little interaction between the evacuation and charging apparatus and a human attendant, and with the interaction which is required being confined to actions which are not critical to the efficiency and reliability of the process.
The evacuation and charging of each refrigeration unit follows the same processing steps, but each refrigeration unit responds differently to the processing steps, such as in the amount of time required to reach predetermined vacuum thresholds, the vacuum levels at different points of measurement, and the vacuum values after vacuum hold cycles. Long term reliability and quality of evacuated and charged refrigeration units could be improved by recording critical evacuation and charging process data while evacuating and charging each refrigeration unit, and by tying this recorded data to the serial number of the associated refrigeration unit. This would permit process evaluation and meaningful process changes and fine tuning of the manufacturing process. Thus, it would be desirable, and it is another object of the invention to provide new and improved refrigeration evacuation and charging methods and apparatus which result in the building of a data bank which includes certain critical information concerning the evacuation and charging of each refrigeration unit, with the data being tied to the serial number of unit it applies to.